Double Whammy (44 page)

“Did we get up on the wrong side of the bed?”

“I said shut up, and don't come no closer.”

Decker stood ten feet away. Jeans, flannel shirt, tennis shoes. A camera hung from a thin strap around his neck.

“You remember the deal,” he said to Curl. “A straight-up trade: Me for her.”

“What kind of deal you offer Lemus?”

Decker said, “I didn't shoot your brother, but I will say he had it coming.”

“So do you, fuckhead.”

“I know, Tom.”

R. J. Decker could see that something was monstrously wrong with Thomas Curl, that he was a sick man. He could also see that something ghastly had happened to Curl's right arm, and that this might be a cause of his distress.

Decker said, “That a dog, Tom?”

“The hell does it look like?”

“It's definitely a dog,” Catherine said. “A pit bull, I believe.”

“I used to know a dog like that,” Decker said affably. “Lived in my trailer park. Poindexter was its name.”

Thomas Curl said, “This one is Lucas.”

“Does he do any tricks?”

“Yeah, he chews the balls off fuckheads like you.”

“I see.”

Catherine said, “You're hurting me, Tom.”

“Take the gun out of there.” Decker spoke calmly. “Let her go now, that was the deal.”

“I'll show you the deal,” said Thomas Curl. With his tumid red tongue he licked the tip of the gun barrel and placed it squarely between Catherine's light brown eyebrows. He twisted the muzzle back and forth, leaving a wet round imprint on her forehead.

“That's the deal Lemus got,” said Thomas Curl. “Dead-center bull's-eye.” He poked the gun back in her breast.

The touch of blue steel on her face had made Catherine shiver. She thought she might even faint; in a way, she wished she would. Falling facedown in the sawgrass would be better than this. And Decker—she could have clobbered him, standing there like it was the checkout line of the supermarket. The one time she wanted to see the hot streak, the dangerous temper. Normally she detested violence, but this would have been an exception; Catherine would have been delighted to watch her ex-husband strangle Thomas Curl with his bare hands.

“I got to kill you both,” Curl said. He was fighting off deep tremors. Sweat gathered in big drops on his cheeks, and his breath came in raspy bursts.

Decker knew he could take him, probably with one good punch. If only the pistol weren't aimed point-blank at Catherine's heart. Oh, Catherine. Decker had to be careful, he was so close to the edge.

“A deal is a deal,” Decker said.

“Hell, I can't let her go now.”

“She won't tell,” Decker said. “She's got a husband to think about.”

“Too bad,” Thomas Curl growled. Suddenly one eye looked bigger than the other. He started rocking slightly, as if on the deck of a ship.

Curl said, “Let's get it over with, I don't feel so good.”

He pushed Catherine toward Decker, who pulled her close with both hands. “Rage, please,” she whispered.

Curl said, “So who wants it first?” When neither of them answered, he consulted his faithful pal. “Lucas, who gets it first?”

“Tom, one final favor before you do this.”

“Shut up.”

“Take our picture together, okay? Me and Catherine.”

Curl sneered. “What the hell for?”

“Because I love her,” Decker said, “and it's our last moment together. Forever.”

“You got
that
right.”

“Then please,” Decker said.

Catherine squeezed his hand. “I love you too, Rage.” The words sounded wonderful, but under the circumstances Decker wasn't sure how to take it; guns make people say the darnedest things.

He lifted the Minolta from around his neck. Thomas Curl tucked the pistol under his right arm and took the camera in his good hand. He examined it hopelessly, as if it were an atom-splitter.

“My daddy's just got a Polaroid.”

“This is almost the same,” Decker said reassuringly. “You look through that little window.”

“Yeah?” Thomas Curl raised the camera to his big eye.

“Can you see us?”

“Nope,” Curl said.

Decker took two steps backward, pulling Catherine by the elbows.

“How about now, Tom?”

Curl cackled. “Hey, yeah, I see you.”

“Good. Now . . . just press that black button on top.”

“Wait, you're all fuzzy-looking.”

“That's all right.”

Curl said, “Shit, might as well have a good final pitcher, considering. Now, how do I fix the focus?”

Catherine squeezed Decker's arm. “Fuck the focus,” she said under her breath. “Go for his gun.”

But in a helpful tone Decker said, “Tom, the focus is in the black button.”

“The same one?”

“Yeah. It's all automatic, you just press it.”

“I'll be damned.”

Decker said, “Isn't that something?”

“Yeah,” Thomas Curl said, “but then where does the pitcher come out?”

“Jesus,” Catherine sighed.

“Underneath,” Decker lied. For the first time he sounded slightly impatient.

Curl turned the camera upside-down in his hand. “I don't see where.”

“Trust me, Tom.”

“You say so.” Curl raised the Minolta one more time. It took several drunken moments to align the viewfinder with his eye.

“Lucas, don't the two of them look sweet?” Curl hacked out a cruel watery laugh. “First I shoot your pitcher, then I shoot your goddamn brains out.”

He located the black button with a twitching forefinger. “Okay, fuckheads, say cheese.”

“Good-bye, Tom,” said R. J. Decker.

There was no film loaded in the camera, only fourteen ounces of water gel, a malleable plastic explosive commonly used at construction sites. For Decker it was a simple chore to run bare copper wires from the camera's batteries directly into the hard-packed gelatin, a substance so volatile that the charge from the shutter contact provided more than enough heat.

As chemical reactions go, it was simple and brief.

At the touch of the button the Minolta blew up; not much in the way of flash, but a powerful air-puckering concussion that tore off Thomas Curl's poisoned skull and launched it in an arc worthy of a forty-foot jump shot. It landed with a noisy sploosh in the middle of the canal.

Catherine was transfixed by how long it took for Curl's headless body to fold up and collapse on the reddening mud; minutes, it seemed. But then, in the pungent gray haze of the killing, every scene seemed to happen in slow motion: R. J. tossing the gun into the water; R. J. dragging the corpse to the boat; R. J. sliding the boat down the bank; R. J. lifting her easily in his arms, carrying her away to someplace safe.

 

They took turns rowing. Every time they squeaked past another bass boat, they got the same mocking look.

“I don't give a shit,” Al García said to Jim Tile. “You notice, they don't seem to be catching fish.”

This was true; García and Jim Tile did not know why, nor did they give it much thought as they rowed. Their concern was for one fish only, and they still had a long way to go. As for the other contestants, they might have been interested to know that Charlie Weeb's hydrologist had warned this would happen, that the imported bass might not feed in the bad water. Even had the pros known the full truth, it was unlikely they would have given up and packed their rods—not with so much at stake. Deep in every angler's soul is a secret confidence in his own special prowess that impels him to keep fishing in the face of common sense, basic science, financial ruin, and even natural disasters. In the maddening campaign at Lunker Lakes, whole tackleboxes were emptied and no secret weapon was left unsheathed. The putrid waters were plumbed by lures of every imaginable size and color, retrieved through every navigable depth at every possible speed. By midday it became obvious that even the most sophisticated angling technology in the world would not induce these fish to eat.

As they tediously rowed the skiff through the network of long canals, Jim Tile and Al García detected angst on the faces of other competitors.

“They don't look like they're having much fun,” García said.

“They don't know what fun is,” said Jim Tile, taking his turn at the oars. “This here's fun.”

With each pull the truth was sinking in: even if they reached the brushpile and did what Skink told them, they'd probably never get back to the dock by sunset. Not rowing.

But they had to try.

“Step on it,
chico,”
Al Garcia said. “Oxford's gaining on us.”

At that moment, on the westernmost end of Lunker Lake Number Seven, Dennis Gault was refolding the waterproof map that his helicopter pilot had marked for him. Lanie was up in the pedestal seat, reading from a stack of
Cosmos
she'd brought along to kill time. Her nose shone with Hawaiian tanning butter.

Dennis Gault breathed on his sunglasses and wiped each lens with a tissue. He tested them against the sun before putting them on. Scanning his arsenal, he selected a plug-casting outfit with a brand-new Double Whammy tied to the end of the line. He tested the sharpness of the hook against his thumbnail, and grinned in self-satisfaction when the barb stuck fast. Then he squirted the lure three times with Happy Gland Bass Bolero.

Finally Gault was ready. He reared back and fired the spinnerbait to the exact spot where the sunken brushpile should have been.

“Come on, mother,” he said. “Suck on this.”

“Explain to me,” the Reverena Charles Weeb said from the barber chair, “exactly how that shit got on the air.”

“The promo spot?” Deacon Johnson asked.

“Yes, Izzy. With all the police cars.”

“It was a live remote, Charles, just like you wanted. ‘We interrupt our regular programming to take you to the Dickie Lockhart Memorial Bass Blasters blah, blah, blah. Tune in later for the exciting finish.' ”

“Sixteen frigging cop cars, Izzy—it looked like a dope raid, not a fishing tournament.”

“It wasn't like we invited them.”

“Oh no,” Charlie Weeb said, “you went one better. You beamed them into eleven million households.”

Deacon Johnson said, “We'd already paid for the satellite time, Charles. I think you're overreacting.”

Weeb squirmed impatiently while the barber worked on his bushy blond eyebrows. He thought: Maybe Izzy's right, maybe the cop cars weren't so bad. Might even get viewers curious, jack up the ratings.

“May I bring him in now?” Deacon Johnson asked.

“Sure, Izzy.” Weeb was done with his haircut. He gave the barber a hundred dollars and told him to go home. Weeb checked himself in the mirror and splashed on some Old Spice. Then he went to the closet and selected a pale raspberry suit, one of his favorites. He was stepping into the shiny flared trousers when Deacon Johnson returned with the designated sinner.

“Well, you're certainly a big fella,” Weeb said.

“I must be,” said the man.

“Deacon Johnson tells me you're blind.”

“Not completely.”

“Well, no, of course not,” Reverend Weeb said. “No child of God is completely blind, not in the spiritual sense. His eyes are your eyes.”

“That's damn good to know.”

“What's your name, sinner?”

“They call me Skink.”

“What's that, Scandinavian or something?
Skink.”
Weeb frowned. “Would you mind, Mr. Skink, if today you took a biblical name? Say, Jeremiah?”

“Sure.”

“That's excellent.” Reverend Weeb was worried about the man's braided hair, and he pantomimed his concern to Deacon Johnson.

“The hair stays,” Skink said.

“It's not that bad,” Deacon Johnson interjected. “Actually, he looks a little like one of the Oak Ridge Boys.”

Charlie Weeb conceded the point. He said, “Mr. Skink, I guess they told you how this works. We've got a dress rehearsal in about twenty minutes, but I want to warn you: the real thing is much different, much more . . . emotional. You ever been to a televised tent healing before?”

“Nope.”

“People cry, scream, drool, tremble, fall down on the floor. It's a joyous, joyous moment. And the better
you
are, the more joyous it is.”

“What I want to know,” Skink said, “is do I really get healed?”